"Lord Help Me, I'm Grieving"

At one end of today, I was sitting in church, jotting down sermon notes from my pastor on a series about grief, and thinking today was gonna be another peaceful Sunday. At another end, I read and saw a terrible story where two-time Indianapolis 500 winner and 2005 Indy Car champion Dan Wheldon died from "unsurvivable injuries" he sustained in a fiery fifteen car wreck eleven laps into the final race of the season in Las Vegas, Nevada. Wheldon was just 33 years old. It's all the more tragic considering that Wheldon, a British-born native of St. Petersburg, Florida, is survived by his wife and his two sons, ages two years old and seven months old.

Wow. You don't have to be a racing fan at all to feel remorse for those immediately involved in this tragedy. Well, you gotta at least be human. And have a soul.

At any rate, the death of Dan Wheldon is a reminder of two things just about all of us take for granted: professional race car drivers, especially those in open-wheel racing, risk their lives at every event, and death is imminent.